As the value and use of information continues to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to process and store information. One option available to users is information handling systems. An information handling system generally processes, compiles, stores, and/or communicates information or data for business, personal, or other purposes thereby allowing users to take advantage of the value of the information. Because technology and information handling needs and requirements vary between different users or applications, information handling systems may also vary regarding what information is handled, how the information is handled, how much information is processed, stored, or communicated, and how quickly and efficiently the information may be processed, stored, or communicated. The variations in information handling systems allow for information handling systems to be general or configured for a specific user or specific use such as financial transaction processing, airline reservations, enterprise data storage, or global communications. In addition, information handling systems may include a variety of hardware and software components that may be configured to process, store, and communicate information and may include one or more computer systems, data storage systems, and networking systems.
Information handling systems often employ data encryption when storing and transmitting data in order to protect the data from being accessed by unauthorized persons. To accomplish such encryption, many information handling systems employ cryptoprocessors to provide secure generation and storage of cryptographic keys, the ability to limit the use of keys (e.g., to signing/verification or encryption/decryption), and other secure tasks. An example of a cryptoprocessor is a Trusted Platform Module (TPM)-compliant with the trusted Computing Group standard. When integrated into an information handling system, the cryptoprocessor may be part of the core root of trust of the information handling system to ensure that the information handling system operates in a secure state, allowing it to remotely attest that the platform can be trusted.
A challenge in manufacturing information handling systems with cryptoprocessors is that multiple system configurations may be required or desired by end users during a life cycle of a particular model of information handling system for various reasons, including introduction of new cryptoprocessor standards which may not be backwards compatible, geographic restrictions on cryptoprocessor functionality, and/or other reasons.
To avoid producing multiple different motherboards for supporting various cryptoprocessor-driven configurations, it may be desirable that the cryptoprocessor be a removable modular plug-in module that interfaces with an information handling system motherboard. With a plug-in module cryptoprocessor implementation, to satisfy various requirements of relevant standards (e.g., TPM standard) an effective mechanism for binding the cryptoprocessor to the motherboard must exist. Traditionally, such binding has been achieved by soldering the cryptoprocessor to the motherboard, which is not possible if a plug-in module is desired.
Existing solutions to this problem have disadvantages. For example, some manufacturers have created custom cryptoprocessor firmware, but this may not be an effective solution as it may not be fully compliant with applicable standards.